John L. Flood

The English Faust Book: A Critical Edition Based on the Text of 1592

Introduction 1. The Faust books and the Faust legend 2. The English Faust Book and its author 3. Bibliographic analysis and printing history of the early English Faust Book editions 4. Faust in England: dating the The English Faust Book and Dr Faustus Notes to introduction Note on the present text Critical apparatus The English Faust Book Commentary Notes Appendix 1. Bibliography of The English Faust Book Appendix 2. Translation of GFB c.65 Appendix 3. Concordance with Dr Faustus A and B Appendix 4. Parallels between The Most Famous History of the learned Fryer Bacon and (a) Dr Faustus, (b) The Tempest.

Poets laureate in the Holy Roman Empire : a bio-bibliographical handbook

This handbook records more than 1300 Imperial Poets Laureate created within the Holy Roman Empire between 1355 and 1804, with a sketch of their lives, a list of their published works, and a note of relevant scholarly literature. An extensive introduction sheds light on a now largely forgotten but once significant literary-sociological phenomenon.

The crisis in Greek teaching at the University of Heidelberg around 1530

The paper investigates the intellectual background to the broadside Clagred der Neun Muse oder kunst vber Teutschlandt (Nuremberg, 1535) with its poem by Hans Sachs (1494–1572) in which the Nine Muses are depicted as returning to Greece, appalled by German materialism. The poem reflects a widespread malaise among German humanists, disturbed by the increasing disregard for humanistic values at German universities. This disenchantment is exemplified by the problems faced by successive teachers of Greek at Heidelberg around 1530, particularly Johannes Sinapius (1505–60). (pp. 84–95)

Xylographa Bavarica. Blockbücher in bayerischen Sammlungen (Xylo-Bav) ed. by Bettina Wagner (review)

in this way to the study of medieval manuscripts. Readers of this journal may want an assessment of the book’s scholarship. In the Introduction we are told that ‘There are new observations and hypotheses in every chapter’, but the absence of footnotes often makes it difficult to distinguish what is second-hand from what is a reinterpretation of already known facts and what is is genuinely original. (To give one example, de Hamel records ‘a sudden shiver of excitement ... in realizing’, when examining the Codex Amiatinus, that a correction on the page in front of him in could have been written by the hand of Bede himself: we are led to assume that this is a dramatic new observation, but in the small-font notes at the end of the book we learn otherwise.) But such distinctions do not matter to the non-specialist, and one cannot criticize a book intended for such an audience for not making its contributions to scholarship more explicit. One point about which de Hamel must surely be wrong is in his description of the twelfth-century Hugo Pictor’s famous self-portrait, in which Hugo is described as ‘ruling out a manu script with one hand’ (p. 268, an assertion repeated on p. 276) while dipping his quill in an ink-pot with the other. But ruling is a two-handed operation, and the pen-knife is instead being used to hold the parchment in place. Ironically, this stan dard use of the knife is acknowledged a few pages later. Having drawn attention to one small lapse, I highlight two features that many medieval manuscript scholars ought to heed. Much credence has been given in recent years to marginal ‘word illustration’ in Gothic Psalters, but when discussing this sort of imagery de Hamel rightly notes, ‘Look hard enough and you can find textual parallels for almost anything. In all probability most of the images are purely decorative ... these are not conscious psalm illustrations as such’. Finally, and most importantly, he repeatedly tries to convey that a book’s physical collation is of fundamental importance for a proper understanding of that book’s original manu facture and any subsequent alterations. Too many medieval manuscript scholars have still not grasped the full significance of this fact. The primary importance of this book is that it brings a version of the work of a medieval manuscripts scholar to a very wide audience which probably previously had no idea what such scholars do. The book is certainly popular, and popularizes its subject, but ‘popularize’ has negative as well as positive connotations. The big question I ponder is: if this book does for medieval manuscript studies what Indiana Jones and Lara Croft have done for archaeology, is that a good or a bad thing?

German through english eyes. A history of language teaching and learning in britain 1500–2000

amazon com german through english eyes a history of this item german through english eyes a history of language teaching and learning in britain 150

Bilingual Europe. Latin and Vernacular Cultures, Examples of Bilingualism and Multilingualism c. 1300–1800

In his introduction to this stimulating volume, which owes its origin to a conference held at Amsterdam in September 2009, Jan Bloemendal explains how the contributors’ aims have been to investigate points of convergence and divergence between Europe’s Latin and vernacular cultures, to examine the impact of bilingualism on social stratification and the self-presentation of individuals and groups, and to explore the implications of the fact that many authors published both in Latin and the vernacular. Within this broad remit, eleven scholars treat particular aspects of the subject. First, Arie Schippers (pp. 15–29), who discusses the specific roles of Occitan and Catalan, Arabic and Hebrew, and their interaction with Latin in the Mediterranean region in the Middle Ages, concludes that there was no dichotomy between Latin and a single vernacular, but rather an interaction of multiple vernaculars. A particularly delightful piece is the late Ari H. Wesseling’s ‘Latin and the Vernaculars: The Case of Erasmus’ (pp. 30–49), which shows that whereas one might, with Huizinga (Erasmus of Rotterdam (New York, 1924), p. 54), infer from Erasmus’s lifelong devotion to classical Latinity that he had no use for vernacular proverbs, the opposite is true. Wesseling shows that in his Adagia and elsewhere Erasmus quotes — albeit in Latin translation — more than 250 sayings of Dutch provenance, and he also discusses the extent to which Erasmus acquired a command of German during his time in Basle and Freiburg (pp. 40–41). Wesseling concludes that, whereas Erasmus’s attitude to his fellow countrymen was ‘highly ambivalent and predominantly negative’ (p. 47), he was fond of his native language and treasured its store of proverbs. Arjan von Dixhoorn, who has previously worked extensively on the so-called ‘chambers of rhetoric’, offers an important study of ‘The Multilingualism of Dutch Rhetoricians’ (pp. 50–72), exemplifying his observations on the interaction between the printed word and the theatrical culture in the Low Countries by a detailed analysis of Jan van den Dale’s Uure van den doot (Brussels, c. 1516). He demonstrates how, employing rhetorical-theatrical means, Van den Dale transformed Pierre Michault’s Danse aux Aveugles (Bruges, c. 1480), an ars moriendi, into an art of rhetoric for the benefit of young rhetoricians. Demmy Verbeke’s ‘Types of Bilingual Presentation in the English-Latin Terence’ (pp. 73–82) investigates pre-1640 English editions of plays by Terence, with a view to determining what their typographical arrangement reveals about their pedagogic function and use. His examination — based on Vulgaria quaedam abs Terencio in Anglicam linguam traducta (Oxford, 1482), perhaps by John Anwykyll; Floures for Latine spekynge selected and gathered oute of Terence (London, 1533), by Nicolas Udall; Terens in englysh ([Paris, c. 1520]), perhaps by J. Rastall; Andria the first comoedie of Terence, in English (London, 1588) by Maurice Kyffin; Terence in English (Cambridge, 1598), by Richard Bernard; The two first comedies of Terence (London, 1627) by Thomas Newman; and Joseph Webbe’s methodologically eccentric editions of Andria and Eunuchus (both London, 1629) — enables him to elaborate still further the various types of mise-en-page identified by Nikolaus Henkel as characteristic of early printed editions.1

Klosterbibliotheken in der Frühen Neuzeit. Süddeutschland, Österreich, Schweiz. Ed. by Ernst Tremp.

they had been officially banned. Kirk Melnikoff suggests that Nicholas Ling published Q1 (1603) and Q2 (1604) Hamlet as part of a series of books that promoted nonconformist ideas on office holding. Douglas Bruster focuses on the year 1600 and the fact that no Shakespeare plays first printed in this year were then reprinted in Shakespeare’s lifetime. However other, non-1600, plays, were. Bruster argues that the 1600 plays were less attractive to readers, perhaps due to a significant increase in the amount of prose they included. Given that Shakespeare returned to verse-heavy writing after 1600, could it be argued that Shakespeare was alert to the publication of his plays? Sonia Massai discusses the synergy between lead publisher Blount and patrons William and Philip Herbert that contributed significantly to the publication of the First Folio. Alan B. Farmer looks at the reasons behind John Norton junior’s decision to reprint five history plays. Norton may have selected history plays because of political unrest in the 1630s; by extension, plays therefore resonated with contemporary concerns. Reprinting might be regarded as a reimagining of Shakespeare’s plays. Finally, Zachary Lesser assesses the bookseller John Waterson and the social meaning of the bookshop. Waterson inherited the bookshop from his father, who had sold intel lectual pieces of upmarket literary publications. Waterson’s shift to (social) courtly literature might have been as a result of the bookshop’s academic reputation. The volume has some minor issues, mainly relating to a number of assertions made without comment. The collection’s most-used and key word, ‘Stationer’, is in parts of the text ascribed with an initial miniscule, ‘stationer’, when in fact it might be argued that there is a substantial difference between ‘Stationer’ (which, of course, relates to the associated professions of printer and bookseller/publisher, licensed under the authority of the Stationers’ Company) and ‘stationer’ (sellers of station ery). Hooks’s comment that booksellers largely stocked their shops ‘with books published by other stationers’ (p. 51) ignores the fact that many booksellers were ‘publishers’, wholesalers, and retailers. For the sake of accuracy and clarity, the abbreviated names of Stationers in Appendix A, taken from title-pages, might have been extended with square brackets. Extended initials would have stopped the questionable decision to provide only an initial for the first name, but then a last name in full, for entries of editions that lack a title page, such as Venus and Adonis (?1595). Quibbles aside, Shakespeare’s Stationers will doubtless prove to be a key text in any discussion of the earlier publication of Shakespeare’s plays, as well as some of the major people and practices that underpinned print publication.

Handschriften im Mittelalter. Eine Quellensammlung. By Martin Steinmann.

nover, and succeeds in getting further than those who have preceded him. He argues that Eadui (whose name Basan more probably means tall than fat) knew the first part of Cassiodorus’s Institutiones, and he recovers the elegiac couplet at the core of the colophon. The discussion and translation of Cassidorus is exemplary. Newton appears not to know a further instance of Eadui’s work published by S. K. Rankin, ‘An Early Eleventh-Century Missal Fragment copied by Eadwig Basan: Bodleian Library, MS Lat. liturg. d. 3, fols. 4–5’, Bodleian Library Record, 18 (2003–5), 220–52), nor the discussions of Eadui’s work by Rebecca Rushforth. Kathryn Lowe boldly attempts to explore the layout of Anglo-Saxon charters, sustained by research on pre-literate engagement with written text among four-yearold children. She discusses the identification of word boundaries and the increasing use of blank space in the layout of mid-tenth-century charters, and speculates on how an illiterate Anglo-Saxon layman might have viewed a charter. I find her valiant attempts to ‘narrow the perception gap between us and them, between now and then’ (p. 177) romantic—the passage she quotes from Kolelnick and Hassett on the rhetoric of visual conventions explicitly refers to readers. And it is strange that she has no place for Anton Scharer’s Die angelsächsischse Königsurkunde im 7. und 8. Jahrhundert, still the best book on Anglo-Saxon charters. The final two papers treat post-Conquest manuscripts. Tessa Webber’s account of Neil Ker’s Lyell lectures, surely some of the most eloquent palaeographical prose on English, conveys the scale of his achievement, and what it made subsequently pos sible. Her lecture is a magnificent expression of the nature of palaeography, and of the methodological problems involved in localizing manuscripts and identifying libraries, and should be read by all of those engaged in work on English manuscripts. Erik Kwakkel’s discussion of continental scribes at Rochester shows how much an expert can learn from pen trials, and makes it clear that scribes trained in Germany, Flanders, and Italy were at work in Anglo-Norman England. These essays provide a superb introduction to the subtlety and precision involved in the study of manuscripts, and the rewards that they bring. We must hope that editor and publisher will offer further volumes.